“We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is to learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.”
— Aldous Huxley, Island
It was cold out, but none of us were cold.
I sat with five men in the mountains of Montana. As the sun set, the fire in the center cast dancing light on our faces. Reclined against fallen trees in a tight circle, we ate mushrooms and fish we’d found under trees and along streams. The whole crew burst into laughter yet again, and one of the guides passed around a fresh batch of pine needle tea.
Bathed in warmth, I took off a layer and glanced skyward through an opening in the trees. The stars shone like crystals on black velvet, and the show—the biggest meteor shower of the year—was starting.
In that moment, there was nothing to do. Nothing to improve. Nothing to fix.
It was perfect.
***
The older I get, the more I think that self-help can be a trap. Sometimes the cure is worse than the disease. I say this after ~20 years of writing self-help and a lifetime of consuming it.
Spend enough time in the world of “improvement,” and you’ll notice something strange: The people most obsessed with self-help are often the least helped by it. Behind the smiles and motivational quotes, behind closed doors and after a drink or two, the truth is that they’re not able to outsmart their worries.
On one hand, perhaps this unhappiness is precisely what lands one in self-development in the first place, right? I long assumed this about myself, and it’s partially true.
On the other hand, what if self-help itself is actually creating or amplifying unhappiness?
Modern self-help contains an in-built flaw:
To continually improve yourself, you must continually locate the ways you are broken.
Fortunately, there are a few perspective shifts that make all the difference. It took me embarrassingly long to figure them out.
To get started, let’s take a fresh look at an old concept.
MASLOW’S HIERARCHY OF NEEDS?
“I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.”
― Abraham Maslow
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs has captured the minds of hundreds of millions. It offers simplicity in a terrifyingly complex world.
Abraham Maslow’s “A Theory of Human Motivation” (1943) contains five levels, which are typically presented like the below pyramid. This one is pulled from the Wikipedia entry on the subject:
We’ve all seen it. Clear as day, you can see the goal post at the top: self-actualization.
LFG! It’s time to journal and 80/20 myself! Pass me a shaman and some modafinil.
That’s the mission. That’s the point.
Right?
But hold on. A critical footnote got lost in the shuffle. In his later writings, especially notes compiled in The Farther Reaches of Human Nature (1971), Maslow added a sixth level above self-actualization:
Self-transcendence.
That update never quite made it out of the crib. The consultants are to blame, but that comes later.
Self-transcendence means going beyond the self—seeking connection with something greater, such as service to others, nature, art, or the divine. Why is it important? Well, for one thing, as Tony Robbins put it at an event long ago: “‘I, I, I, me, me, me’ gets to be a really fucking boring song.”
But it’s not just a boring song; it’s dangerous to your health.
DON’T BE A SOMO
“The man who renounces himself, comes to himself.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
Self-help is dangerous precisely because it easily becomes self-fixation.
A focus on improving the self usually first requires finding problems with the self. This is quite the pickle. In a society that rewards problem-solving, you can end up hallucinating or exaggerating unease in order to fix it. This leaves you always in the red, always one step behind. Imagine a dog chasing its tail that has committed to being unhappy until it catches the tail… but it’s always just a few inches short. Still, it whirls around and around, “doing the work.” Perfection always recedes by one more book, one more seminar, one more habit tracker.
Put in more colorful terms, misdirected self-help turns you into a self-obsessed masturbatory ouroboros (SOMO).
To remind me of the SOMO risk, I have this sticker on my laptop:
Now, to be clear, I still love self-help. Ain’t no way Timmy can give up the sauce. There’s a place for it.
From The Bible to Seneca, and from Ben Franklin to Stephen Covey and far beyond, there’s a lot of valuable advice worth taking. I used to mainline it all—no time to waste!—and jump straight into action. This did some good, but there was a lot of collateral damage.
Why?
Because there are at least three “tectonic plates of self-help” that I couldn’t see for decades, and they dictate how much net-positive or net-negative comes from all the striving. Before you sprint, you want to calibrate your direction.
THE THREE TECTONIC PLATES OF SELF-HELP
“As to methods there may be a million and then some, but principles are few. The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods. The man who tries methods, ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble.”
— Harrington Emerson
In the last few years, my life has become much more of a joy than a grind, and that’s because I’ve focused on three tectonic plates.
Let’s take a close look at each.
1. Intention
Individual or Social?
Americans, in particular, worship at the altar of the rugged individualist. There are clear upsides to this. But steeped in a culture—offline and especially online—that puts the self on a pedestal; we can take self-improvement to be an end unto itself: a better self.
But is it an end unto itself? Does it automatically produce good things? I now have my doubts.
Here’s one analogy I’ve drawn for myself.
Let’s pretend that life is the game of soccer. You can work on the mechanics of soccer by yourself. You can always get better at dribbling, shooting, and running drills as a solo practitioner. You can read dozens of books, study tape, and earn a PhD in the physics of ball flight. You can post videos of stunning shots on YouTube and get showered by emojis.
But none of this is actually playing the game of soccer.
You can spend your whole life preparing for, instead of playing, the game of life.
But why would anyone, including yours truly, succumb to this?
Subconsciously, it spares you from the messiest but most rewarding game of all: human interaction. Perhaps people hurt or traumatized you long ago. You might also justify the endless polishing, as I did, with some version of “Once I’ve perfected myself, then I’ll be ready for relationships.” But here’s the rub: that practice is exactly endless. You can always get better at dribbling and penalty kicks.
Digging further, focusing on improving the self is often in service of trying to control the world, especially if things were unpredictable or unstable when growing up. Banish emotion, live by spreadsheets, and all can be well. All can be controlled, or so the illusion goes. But as soon as you’re interacting with—let alone depending on—other people, control as a construct goes out the window. And so we consciously or subconsciously avoid the messiness. This is also one of the reasons why a lot of optimizing achiever folks have a hard time in intimate relationships.
So how do I think about “self-help” now, having realized all of the above?
It is refreshingly simple: the goal is to build and improve my relationships. The sooner you get on the real field with real players, the sooner you can get to playing soccer and engaging with life. No more auto-fellating, even with the best of intentions. We’ve evolved over millions of years to be deeply social creatures, and the more you dodge that IN REAL PHYSICAL LIFE, the more you will suffer. This is why solitary confinement in prisons is often considered cruel and unusual punishment… and yet we do it to ourselves all the time.
There are a few questions that help corral this tectonic plate of intention:
- How does any given “self-help” help me in my relationships, and how can I apply it with other people today or this week?
- How can I take the ship out of the harbor and test it where it counts?
2. Audience
Do you have an audience for your self-development? If so, be careful.
Nary a minute can be spent on social media without bumping into a CAPS-rich “HOW X CHANGED MY LIFE” or a photo carousel of an ayahuasca retreat. If only Costa Rica got a dime for every bikini-clad healer under a waterfall!
Welcome to the theater of performative self-help. I won’t belabor this, as we’ve all seen it, but I suggest reading about the insidious creep of audience capture here, and don’t forge ahead in the fame game before reading 11 reasons not to become famous. It’s hard to put the genie back in the bottle, so you should know what that genie will do to your life.
But the truth is that most of us aren’t extreme examples of this. But even minor tendencies in this direction can do extreme damage over time.
Below are a few questions that I’ve found helpful for nudging this particular tectonic plate in the right direction:
- If you couldn’t tell a soul about “the work” you’re doing, would you still do it? If not, you’re not developing yourself; you’re curating yourself.
- How has sharing your personal development created tradeoffs?
- If you had to take down 20% of your most popular posts, which would you take down and why?
- Are you describing strong catalysts (psychedelics, The Hoffman Process, you name it) instead of doing the post-session integration that makes them truly valuable?
- Have you become more robust or more fragile by offering your inner workings up to public vote?
- Has your social presence made you more or less of the person you want to be? How would the you of three or five years ago feel about your last year of posts? What about the you of 10 years from now?
3. Assumption
What are the fundamental assumptions behind your doing “the work”?
Let’s begin with a Buddhist parable that I first heard from the incredible Jack Kornfield.
The old Master points to a big boulder and asks a disciple, “See that large rock over there?”
“Yes,” says the disciple.
“Do you think it’s heavy?” continues the Master.
“Yes, it’s very heavy!” replies the student.
“Only if you pick it up,” smiles the Master.
Once again, the fundamental assumption behind self-help is often this: Something is not OK. Something is wrong. Something is not enough. Something needs fixing. If I can’t find it, I’ll create it.
We’ve established this. But there is a follow-on assumption that matters a lot.
If I fix the things that aren’t OK, all will be well. If I improve myself enough, if I only work hard enough, I can finally eliminate my suffering.
I hate to inform you, but this doesn’t work. I’m also thrilled to inform you that this doesn’t work. You can stop picking up a lot of boulders.
There is one book that most opened my eyes to this reframe – Already Free: Buddhism Meets Psychotherapy on the Path of Liberation by Bruce Tift. It offers a terrifying but ultimately liberating realization: there is no perfect escape from suffering. It doesn’t exist. But there is a way to find your long-sought unclenching, and it lies in cultivating your skill of acceptance as much as that of improvement.
Now, I can hear the chorus: Has Tim gone soft? Given up the good fight? Is he telling everyone to chill after he himself red-lined and got the spoils? How convenient! And…
Hold on a second. I’m telling you—intelligent acceptance is high-leverage. It’s probably one of the highest forms of leverage. This is an approach that helps preserve your energy for where it really matters. My early forays into Stoicism and Seneca The Younger helped set the conditions for my biggest wins from 2004–2010. Still, I only learned a small fraction of what I needed.
So how do you cultivate your skill of acceptance without becoming complacent?
This is a big question and what I love about Bruce’s book. Compared to a strictly Western or purely Eastern book, he blends them and offers a surgical guide to using both action and acceptance. You don’t have to be a bull in a china shop or a cow in the rain; there is a middle path. That middle path is where all the gold is buried.
If the only tool you have is “self-improvement,” you’ll become a hammer looking for nails in a world that is 50% screws. I tried it. It can create the veneer of success, but it will leave your inner world in turmoil.
Suffice to say, the dual dance is the most joyful. Upgrade your toolkit with that in mind. Read Bruce’s book. If it doesn’t click, try Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life with the Heart of a Buddha by Tara Brach, which had a large impact on my life a decade before I found Bruce’s book. In a sense, the writing of Seneca prepared me for Tara, which then prepared me for Bruce. So grab them all and thank me later.
If you want serenity, you need to be able to put the Serenity Prayer into practice. Seriously, I read it all the time.
MASLOW’S HAMBURGER OF NEEDS?
“The more one forgets himself—by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love—the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself. What is called ‘self-actualization’ is not an attainable aim at all, for the simple reason that the more one would strive for it, the more he would miss it. In other words, self-actualization is possible only as a side-effect of self-transcendence.”
― Viktor E. Frankl
How can we easily keep ourselves on the right track?
As I remind myself these days: It’s the relationships, stupid.
For a nice simple visual, let’s revise Maslow’s pyramid with all of this in mind. This is easy, as Maslow never drew his model as a rigid pyramid!
He described “classes” of needs that were unfixed, overlapping, and that could reverse in order. And believe it or not, self-actualization was only ever for the “self-actualizing minority.” In the 1960s, his work was co-opted by consultants and corporate trainers who needed a progression to sell. True story.
Given all this, and after decades of trial and error, here’s where I’ve landed:
Maslow’s Hamburger of Needs.
Ahhh… what? Not to worry. It’s the same good ol’ Maslow ingredients, but I think of it as a hamburger:
For our purposes, the meat, the whole point of the hamburger, is that middle layer: relationships. That is the center of life. The heartbeat.
As luck would have it, when you improve the heartbeat, it also feeds everything else.
You’ll notice that the meat contains Abe’s most-important addendum—the sixth level of self-transcendence. Focusing on things bigger than yourself is a critical piece of the ultimate puzzle. Faith, nature, family, meditation, causes that outlive you, etc.—take your pick. But be careful. If you do it to inflate the ego or impress others, it’s self-obsession again, not self-transcendence. If you need credit, it doesn’t count.
Of course, it should go without saying, but the top and bottom layers matter a lot. A hamburger is a giant mess without the bun. Friends will get sick of you crashing on their couch and eating their food.
But the bread and dressing layers exist to serve the middle. That’s the payload. Everything is in service of the payload. And the payload circulates benefits back to the edges, and then the cycle repeats. Even if you think this is oversimplified claptrap, temporarily assuming it’s true will help you.
What if nearly everything you focused on—calendar, habits, goals—aimed to improve your relational life somehow? What if you took this as a challenge for even a week? Your lens on the world changes dramatically.
You say yes differently.
You say no more clearly.
Your to-do list for life slowly transforms.
What if all that you focused on, all that you do, had to improve that middle layer in some fashion?
It’s a damn hard question if you’ve been on the self-help train for a while. I get it.
So let’s try something easier: What if it only changed how you approach your to-do list? Try hamburger-first each day for 1–2 weeks and tell me what happens. Add and do the things that improve your relational life FIRST. Nothing on the list? Create something. It could be as simple as cooking dinner for your spouse, complimenting at least three people a day for a week, or introducing yourself to the barista you see every morning. Getting started is how you get grooving.
ARE YOU DOING SELF-HELP, OR IS SELF-HELP DOING YOU?
For friendship makes prosperity more shining and lessens adversity by dividing and sharing it.
— Marcus Tullius Cicero
In his Moral Letters to Lucilius, Seneca the Younger famously wrote that “These individuals [who put money at the center of life] have riches just as we say that we ‘have a fever,’ when really the fever has us.”
What if self-help is similar?
Obsessing over the self never provides peace. It cannot make you whole, as you aren’t the whole. Becoming whole starts by putting down the rock you didn’t even know you were carrying.
Because at the end of the day—and at the end of a Montana night—the point was never yourself.
It was never the pyramid.
It was never the optimization.
It was the people around the fire.
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Thank you for this. Great job of self-reflection and intellectual adaptability.
I play the organ and lead the church choir. Whenever praise or thanks from the pulpit is given, it does nothing for me. I think namely because I was never doing it for the thank yous. Really just want to serve, provide the congregation a worship experience, and if Christ accepts it, that’s all I care about. Something about this post resonates.
I’ve never even tried to say “Thank-you”, Tim for all the years of knowledge and insight I’ve gained from your writing and podcasts. So, I’m gonna try here – Thank you! From the bottom of my heart.
Tim, great post and one that really captures the circular nature of much self help. Reading about Harvard’s Longitudinal Study reinforces what you are talking about here- it’s the relationships that give life meaning. The other stuff is important but incomplete without strong relationships.
Tim’s writing reinforces the Harvard Study perfectly!
Where can I find the link/study?
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11575524/
Dear Tim, you’ve given us a lot to think about in the last 20 years. This might just be your most important message yet. Thank you for the honesty.
I agree: Tim’s most important message yet!
I agree with you Renata! I have been thinking about this concept for a long time but never knew how to articulate it correctly. Thanks Tim!
Ditto!
Sounds like you are close to discovering Christianity
Funny I thought the same thing. Sober many years working the same program/group-of-principles forwards and backwards sometimes hard, sometimes without even knowing it and the truths don’t change but are sure hard to remember.
Jesus
YES! Spent 20+ years listening to loved ones and therapists about how depressed I was, that I was born with a depression gene. That wasn’t true, but I spent hundreds– thousands?– of hours and tons of money with therapists instead of getting out and doing life. Now I’m sooo happy, free, never depressed. I’m doing life, making mistakes, learning from that, nailing some things no problem, having adventures, attracting happier people.
I was born happy, and now that I’m actually living life instead of studying a false diagnosis of depression, I am living happy. And yes, even during very hard times, it’s easy for me to count my blessings. Life is beautiful when you dive in and live it.
What a great comment!
I am so happy that you are living your life and it’s beautiful!
How wonderful that you have found your way to happiness. But in case someone is reading this who really is depressed, I just want to point out that depression is real. If you’re diving in and living your life and you still feel depressed, then take that seriously. What works for one person may not be right for another.
The acceptance of suffering and darker days seems really liberating, right?
Tim — I say this as someone who genuinely admires your work and has learned a great deal from it: this piece landed as less anti–self-help to me and more like a maturing of it, though I can see why the framing might feel paradoxical coming from someone whose life’s work has helped millions improve theirs.
What struck me most is that you’re not really rejecting self-help, but warning against self-fixation masquerading as growth. The SOMO idea resonates, not because self-help is inherently flawed, but because optimization without orientation can turn into a form of self-surveillance. Improvement becomes an identity instead of a tool.
In that sense, what you’re pointing toward feels closer to an older tradition: Emerson, Maslow’s later work, even Aldous Huxley, where the self is something to be cultivated and then transcended, not endlessly audited. The problem isn’t self-help; it’s self-help untethered from relationship, service, and lived participation.
I also appreciate the honesty of naming that many of us (especially those fluent in systems, metrics, and leverage) can use “doing the work” to avoid the messier, less controllable work of being with people. That hit home.
So maybe the apparent contradiction is actually the point: self-help works best when it stops being the center of gravity. When it serves life instead of replacing it.
Thanks for writing something that complicates the conversation rather than flattening it. This felt less like a renunciation and more like a reminder… to put the tools down occasionally and sit back at the fire.
This is beautiful. The fire, the laughter, the sky — that moment of nothing to fix — that’s real. It feels like freedom from the endless “self project.”
And you’re right: self-help easily becomes self-obsession. Even “transcendence” can become another refined strategy of the ego.
But what if what you tasted that night wasn’t just relief from striving — but a hint of something higher?
You point to relationship as the center. That’s more than psychologically healthy — it’s metaphysically true. Reality itself is communion. We are not isolated selves trying to perfect ourselves; we are beings made for participation in a greater Life.
This is the heart of deification: not self-optimization, not mere acceptance, but transformation through union with the Divine. As The Oxford Handbook of Deification (Oxford University Press, 2024) and a new spate of books on the subject by its editors and contributors explore, the human calling is nothing less than becoming “partakers of the divine nature” — not by egoic striving, but by receptive surrender.
That Montana moment wasn’t just “this is enough.” It was a signpost. The peace you felt isn’t found by fixing yourself — nor by abandoning growth — but by opening to the Love that precedes and exceeds you.
It was never the pyramid.
Not the optimization.
Not even just the circle around the fire.
It’s the Fire at the center of Reality — inviting us not merely to sit near it, but to burn with it.
And that invitation is for now. For everyone.
Thanks so much for this reminder which adds even more to the Bigger Bigger Picture
Thanks, Lynda — and btw there are many more places to be reminded that don’t carry a big ($190!) price tag, e.g., DIVINIZATION by Andrew Hofer, OP; FILLED WITH ALL THE FULLNESS OF GOD by Thomas McDermott, OP; HOW TO BE HIS by Jesse Maingot, OP and Ignatius Schweitzer, OP; and Chris Jensen’s classic online article “Shine As the Sun: C.S. Lewis and the Doctrine of Deification.”
“To continually improve yourself, you must continually locate the ways you are broken.” This aspect of self-help is something I’ve thought about quite often. It perfectly describes a version of myself that was entirely focused on fixing whatever I perceived to be broken. Metta meditation helps with this, btw! You’ve managed to capture this experience beautifully. Thanks, Tim!
Yes, Metta helps a lot! 🙂
Tim, bravo. As someone who spent decades working in the self-help world — both behind the scenes and as a teacher, I read this nodding the whole way through.
These days I sometimes joke that I’d like a friendly divorce from the industry. The endless hunt for “what’s wrong with me now?” can become its own trap.
Ironically, the single biggest shift in my life came through the Hoffman Process. It helped me deeply heal some early childhood programming and put down rocks I didn’t even realize I was carrying.
And yes — the people around the fire really are the point. ~Arielle Ford
I completed The Hoffman Process in 2001. It made me smile when you wrote “put down the rocks I didn’t even realize I was carrying.” BRAVO!
This may be the single best self-help post I have ever read. It is terribly difficult to make complex ideas simple, because you have to go through ALL of the complexity before you can help others with a simpler path. There is no other way. But what an awesome gift to give others! Any time we can walk the hard road and use that experience to ease the journey of others then we honor the work it took to walk the hard road in the first place.
The most human part of this post was the “I can hear the chorus now. Has Tim gone soft?” sentence. In that sentence we see you struggling to admit the truth about your learnings while worrying about your audience’s reaction. Was it all just a hoax? Has Tim spent decades as a marketing engine? The answer is no, simply because you continue to be willing to grow and share what you believe will truly help others. It is the meat. It is the payload.
Well done.
Keep going.
Stay vulnerable.
Talk about an essential message I especially needed to hear so much today…
VERY Grateful for the timing of its receipt!
Exactly, so well said Ben. Copying the first part of your post and sharing it with my team. 🙏🏼
Much love!
Great reflection, Tim!
My mind has been in orbit around this recently after a spell of what came to feel like over-analysis of myself. I’ve some very very useful techniques and contemplative practices and there are times when they really make a difference in easing anxiety or giving me clarity.
At times though, it all becomes too much input and I return to mental overload. When the most recent visit to that painful place came about I had the realisation that what I’d been trying to do was relentlessly apply self-help techniques and I saw the underlying and built-in assumption that I’m not OK at I am; that I need to be fixed.
That realisation came as a big letting go.
As I was reading your post, it felt like the words flow with such ease and clarity. Thank you for the words, written in the light manner and with some proper weight behind them.
Love this Tim — as a Psychologist who has periodically found himself in the same self-optimization trap you describe, this is a refreshing take on self-help and a helpful reminder! It also fits really nicely with the principles of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy — keep the great reflections coming!
My three pillars are: 1. Our hearts are restless until they rest in you Lord. 2. Our ability to flourish has a great deal to do with how we handle what Phil Stutz has identified – every life has pain, uncertainty and constant work. 3. As Siddhartha sat by the river, he saw and heard all the faces and voices of everyone he had met – he saw that everything and everyone is connected and he understood that the key is to love all these gifts that enter your life. Interestingly, it is the seeking and the path of Self-Help that has led me to these pillars.
I’ll give the hamburger a try
I love this. As you point out, the paradox of self help is that improvement requires continually locating what is wrong, which quietly trains the mind to search for problems. A line I heard recently captures the escape hatch: “When always becomes a maybe, you start to awaken.”
Thank for the GREAT quote!
In our working lives, many of our relationships are forced upon us, our bosses, our work colleagues, customers, clients. We don’t get to pick who those people or organisations are. Those relationships can sometimes be great, and sometimes not. I retired recently and one of the things I noticed is you go from hero to zero in these manufactured relationships. It’s what you have left that then becomes the bedrock on which you need to build. Close friends, acquaintances at the yoga studio, the librarian, the folks you meet when walking the dog. And even if you didn’t do it previously, you now see and realise the preciousness of those interactions.
The precious moments of impermanence!
Thanks for this, only one thing, your burger is missing the beetroot. All the best.
I love this. I work as a psychiatrist and sleep specialist in the bay. Let’s connect some time. Fine tuning the Ferraris… I think a lot about this kinda thing.
Here’s some fun irony for ya: I have a client writing a book about this very topic. A self-help book about how self-help can actually become self-NOT help. Really important conversation in today’s world where everyone is scrambling over each other to get to the top of the damn mountain.
Meanwhile, I find myself wanting to Thoreau myself into the nearest forest and read 100-year-old books and listen to the birds sing their songs.
Appreciate the convo, Timmy. 🙂
“to Thoreau myself”
LOVE this phrase to the moon!
Simply, thank you ❤️
Great post, Tim, maybe the best one yet. 😉
Excellent insights Tim! If we are just serving ourselves, it is such a small enterprise…
To simplify, as Ram Dass said, instead of being a “seeker”, why not be a “finder?” “The game is to be where you are. Be it honestly and as consciously as you know how. Your entire life is a curriculum. Everything you’ve got on your plate is where the stuff for your enlightenment is. It’s breathtaking when you see the beauty of this design.”
I am so happy Ram Dass “entered the conversation” by your quoting him.
Thanks so much!
I read this as self-help through a relational lens. Or maybe self-transcendence through a relational path is a more apt description. I have a wierd question: if you cut half, how would it read? I just have this weird sense that this post has something I really want to understand which would be easier if distilled. Maybe this is more like a conversation you are allowing us to witness? I don’t feel like I have enough grasp yet to participate except to ask for better understanding. As always, grateful for your time and sharing.
I’d say this and your post on suicide are going to be the most impactful blog posts you’ve done. It shows some actual fucking wisdom, gained only through time and age.Bravo!
Could not AGREE more, Tom.
This is a VERY BIG DEAL!
Before smartphones we had it figured out as kids and teenagers to prioritize relationships. Then as we got older many of us succumbed to the pressure to make as much money as possible, chase constant career advancement, and endlessly accumulate material things. And now things are setup where two income families are a necessity instead of a choice just to survive. It’s no wonder people are turning to self-help searching for a way to escape the hedonic treadmill and never ending financial pressure.
So true as kids we prioritized our friends.
Wisdom from the Babes!
OMG, Somebody says it all. In the midst of a crisis to overcome my limitations, I realized that there is comfort in knowing that, at the end of the day, none of it really matters afterall. I just want to use my skills to help the team. If I can do that, I can transend and therefore, fulfill. But it still hurts to be damaged, and I still need to help myself if I can. Thank you for validating that!
Thank you Tim. An excellent essay containing so much food for thought. When I heard you mention the draft on your recent interview podcast I was hoping that you’d release it soon.
Lately I’ve pondered these challenging ideas with regard to my personal growth.
Your essay is EXACTLY WHAT I NEEDED to crystallize and clarify my own conflicting confusing thoughts.
You did the heavy lifting to bring The Bigger Picture into a Much Better Focus.
Thank you for your Good Work that benefits me so much, and so many others.
Nothing like living in a Tel Aviv bomb shelter for a week to provide clarity and simplicity. You only get a few short times a day outside of the shelter and you remember to buy milk for one neighbour, bottled water for another and diapers for a third. You’ve done exactly nothing special and yet you feel awesome. Am Yisrael Chai.
Haven’t read a Tim Ferris post in over 10 years, first commented on one 20 years ago. Came for the self-realisation, and it did not disappoint. Good for you, Tim.
I first read 4HWW as an impressionable 21 year old and just took it as gospel. I started a business, travelled the world for 10 years from a laptop and did everything I ever dreamed off, and everything everyone else had on their bucket list. Until it all came crashing down at age 30 – hedonism it seems does not help you escape yourself, or life’s tragedies. It’s the events that happen on a random Tuesday afternoon that really shape everything.
Now another 10 years later at age 40 I’m married, have two wonderful kids, a few more businesses and more money than I’ve ever had – but I also have something greater – the realisation that what I aspired to in my 20s was meaningless. I still love self help, I still love business, love building, reading, trying, failing. I still get depressed, angry, happy, sad, surprised. You can’t engineer any of that in either direction – it just happens. And thats ok.
Faith, Family, Friends. In that order. Everything else is just noise.
Take it from a guy that did everything, and found out only a few things actually matter.
And thank you, Tim. From a guy you don’t know, means nothing to you but whom you changed the entire direction of his life and all those connected to him.
Thank you.
Thanks, Tim. I really needed this. Now back to my endless podcasts, trendy workout equipment (Shakeweight), and buying more exercise supplements that’ll expire before I use them.
Forever on Point! Your unwavering quest to explore and perfect the journey through the maze of life…provides relentless comfort to the human soul. Thank you, Tim!
A great book is Stop Trying to Fix Yourself by Anthony De Mello
Hi Tim, I have been an intermittent consumer of yours and others content for the last 30 years. I am 49 with a beautiful wife and 4 daughters and a somewhat successful business, from the outside life looks perfect, but I have always struggled internally that I could be doing better and not giving my BEST.
This blog may be the most impactful thing I have ever read, thank you for waking me up and showing me a different perspective. I wish you continued enlightenment.
Tim, this is the juiciest burger that is plate-fresh, though it’s taken years of development. Thank you for the honest assessment of your own processes (and offering those to help us all), and how beliefs and practices can moderate over time. Keep refining the ingredients and keep cooking that burger.
I agree wholeheartedly! I love your take on this subject. Self improvement can become selfish if it’s done with the wrong motive. Knowing your “why” and purpose focusing on the greater good (establishing healthy relationships) keeps us fulfilled. We learn as we take action in our mission while enjoying the journey.
What I value about your insights Tim, is that they come from years of experience. You have lived this path of improvement and have reflections that are beneficial. I admit I was nervous to read this because personal improvement is my job. And I think I got into it, because my family doesn’t help themselves. As I have gotten older I have learned the value of going from being a victim to being capable. What I am hearing in your post is the “why.” Life is about connection with others, and if that’s not behind the doing, then what’s the point. Which I understand theoretically, but as someone who has moved a lot, in some ways I’ve given up on prioritizing friendships. Lots of great thoughts from your blog.
Very interesting reading. I also want to thank you Tim for years of sharing insights and wisdom. You have made your journey our journey, and it has been a great trip. Thanks for guiding us on the mission.
Thank you, Tim, for this important corrective. I’ve benefited a lot from self-help books – including yours! – but I’ve been finding the testosterone-soaked self-optimization culture exhausting. Lately, I’ve been trying on the thought, “What if everything is perfect just as it is?”
BTW, I’ve read that Maslow’s hierarchy of needs has been interpreted much more rigidly and linearly than he intended. It was never about climbing a pyramid to reach the optimal state at the top – that’s achievement culture talking.
Tim, I must say this is exactly what I needed, and I think what many more people than would like to admit need. Thank you for taking the time to share such a meaningful essay; I was hoping for its arrival after listening to your podcast on Dan Harris’s show. Thank you for taking the time to shine a light on the dark side of a glorified topic. It was something I never questioned, but this article flipped a switch for me. All i can say is thank you. Thank you for this article, your books, podcasts and much more!
People always seem to overthink Maslow’s pyramid. I interpret it as you can only get to the self-actualization stuff when you have all the stuff beneath it. Like you can’t have the pinnacle of a pyramid without actually building the damn pyramid.
I would say that the meat should really be the work. That’s covered by “things that outlive you” which is here in the text but not on the diagram. It’s like Brene Brown said, in a chat with you I think (and I’m paraphrasing from memory), “when all these shiny things land on my desk of things to do, how do I decide which ones to prioritise? And the answer is, the ones that serve the work.” The work can be for other people and relationships, but I find that work for its own sake is somehow holier.
Huge fan since 2015. Are the Random Shows with Kevin your most listened-to podcasts? If so, it’s because of the fostering of your existing relationship with Kev-Kev, which emphasizes your point even more! I see you didn’t mention the dynamic/dilemma for introverts; would love to read people’s thoughts on that.
Thank you!
Congratulations! Great post. Thank you for all the gems of wisdom you shared with us over the years.
Here is an additional thought: The core assumption of self-improvement remains unaddressed: it assumes the self can be improved. But to improve something, you need to define (measure, quantify, etc.) it. Which requires defining self = who you are. Impossible.
You can define what you have (cars, experiences, habits, thoughts, emotions, identity, character, soul, achievements, failures), and they can indeed be improved. But who you are is undefinable and cannot be improved. It is. While who you are can’t be defined, it can be realized.
Our identity (who we think we are) is essentially the assumption that we are a separate entity. And aims at resolving that pain of separation by fixing (yourself, others, the world). That is relatively helpful, but it also perpetuates the innocent trance of separation. You are not the mechanism enabling individuality; you are the undivided Self expressing through and as it.
Terrific piece Tim. I think it’s right on man. I have exhausted the self-help addiction and find myself in a place of reasonable humility (I hope!), faith, concern for others, and experiencing long sought after tolerance and patience. Thanks!
After following your musings since your first podcast I say this with respect: “It’s great to see that you are getting it!”. The last piece of the puzzle Tim, have kids. That will be another step change. It’s been both the best and worst thing I have done, but it has taught me everything about life.
Indeed the people around the fire is primal and ingrained. Self help in small doses is a effective balm for life’s anxiety to much and it’s balls deep infinity
Actually, right now reading this and texting my mum in Israel. The sirens were plenty for the last 24 hours. Her sleep is zero as every two hours is an alert to seek cover. Self development? An illusion. I like clarity. Thank you for breaking it down to 3 things. People, stop being self-centred!
Simply put, brilliant. Thank you for stepping back and reflecting and sharing your thoughts. Thank you, thank you.
Fox – a modern parable
Fox came across a group of wild foxies in the forest, but he was alone. He longed to join them and dance and sing around their fire in the forest. But he felt he might not impress them. So he went back to his cave and decided to learn to dance. He spent years at it and became very good. He crept up one night to see if he might join that group of happy foxies, dancing and singing around the campfire, like they had been doing for years. But Fox still felt he needed other things to brush up his dancing even more. He went back to his cave and spent every moment making his dancing better and better. He became the best dancer of all time after several more years. Finally, he crept back to the forest, excited. Now his time had come. He would impress all those foxies dancing around that campfire every night. They would love him. They might even make him their leader. He got close to the spot where there had been all that dancing every day and night. But there was no fire now, and no one was dancing. All those foxies who had danced together every night and day had grown old and died, one by one. None was left. Fox looked at the place they had danced. He truly was now a great dancer. But there was no one left to dance with.
Thank you for this Tim.
My challenge, as a 48 year old male in a rural area, is how to go about expanding my social relationships.
Perhaps it’s the years of self-help, the desire for growth, or my unwillingness to accept age as a limitation but my relationships I grew up with no longer fulfill me.
Regardless, your challenge has been accepted. I will focus on improving my relationships now and stop waiting until I’m wealthy, fit, and smart enough as if it will magically attract people to me.
I mean, it still seems like it will but as Tim says, “what if I did the opposite?”
Banger. You’re so good at articulating my allergies. 1st to psychedelic healing panacea. And now to the whole social media self help ecosystem.
Connection is the game. Thanks for the reminder. Proud of you Tim.
“The Buddha said,
‘Having excellent friends
and keeping good company
is not half the sacred Way;
it is the very Way itself.’”
~ UPADDHA SUTTA (SN45.2)
So this is it I guess? My relationship with self help
(its been a decade now).
Thank you for this
Have you read You & We: A Relational Re-Thinking of Work, Life and Relationships by Jim Ferrell? You would love it.
Great piece honest and very refreshing. Claptrap is such a great word.
just read “Manufacturing Happy Citizens” by cabanas & ilouz. It’s that simple.
The master does nothing, yet leaves nothing undone. 🤍✨
Self-transcendence is the key. Where the self-help journey ends, the spiritual journey starts.
– consists good insights on calling what is BS self-help; SOMO (Self-Obsessed Masturbatory Ouroboros)
challenging / contrarian thoughts
– even this post is “self help”
– because even this aims towards reducing suffering
– assumption (i can be wrong): post mirrors Tim’s need to solve for relationships and people around him, discounting people around or thinking more about self might have led to suffering – that led to this reflection
my takeaway / re-enforcements
– optimisation, perfectionism is a trap – there is no meaning of “perfect”
– growth can be endless and without contentment, it adds to suffering
– without “self” there is no “self-help”
– thinking about “self” can boost ego (sense of self) that seeks validation, yet there is a secure place where you can contribute without making it about yourself
– aiming for contribution, adding value will give you peace, seeking validation adds to suffering (external led)
– accepting there’s going to be suffering throughout (because we will have desires) kinda mellows it down, fighting it aggravates
thanks Tim, for sharing this, I got to wander around your reflections and build my own thoughts and clarity around it
I agree with others who have said this is your best work yet. Interestingly and fortunately my 26 year old came to this conclusion on his own about a month ago. He is spending 3 months in Bulgaria (taking language lessons and tapped into the community with a physical activity – folk dancing) and he came to the conclusion he doesn’t like living where he does at home because it lacks the right level of community. He has always prioritized building relationships and I think the best thing I have taught him is to be the person who does the work, e.g. texts again if someone ghosts him. Good luck in your new journey to eat the meat before the bun. 🙂
Excellent and timely piece, thank you
Thank you Tim for your insights. I’ve missed reading your blog posts and writing style.
I grew up being sidelined in the family circle quite a lot , i then put in the work to fight that and not need anyone ,however with more lessons in scripture i had to take away the selfshiness ,i help responsibly and do not thumb suck big decisions , relationships are my biggest asset
The biggest of virtual hugs to you Tim 🙂
I happen to have written a novel about pretty much exactly this (during which you were often in my head)… though finding representation for it suggests it’s not a message the world (at least the publishing part of it) desperately wants to hear!
Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage -Anais NIn ….….
Tim, your blog resonates. I love your opening story, it invites us to recognise and connect with those fundamental natural elements in our humanness, just to ‘be’ in that moment accessing a deeper satisfying, powerful resource for living lives of love, creativity, satisfaction and fulfilment.
’Self & other help’ has invited me personally over and over again to build a deeper, at times uncomfortable relationship both within and outside of myself. It’s enabled me access to previously inaccessible, often unloved parts of myself.
Self help continues to be a steadfast friend to allow vulnerability, uncertainty, not knowing the answers. To pick myself up and find courage to give voice, movement and grounded action to live into my ongoing ethical becoming.
Massimilla & Bud Harris offer some compelling guides in their work – ‘Into the heart of the Feminine.’ It offers some interesting concepts from the transactional to the transformational. Beyhond fixing!
I appreciate the challenge your blog has offered, exercising my thinking brain! Enjoyed reading the comments too.
Great to read the appreciation you are offered for who you are and what you so freely and generously offer in our under nourished world. 🙏🏽
Really, Tim? Posting this right on my birthday? After I had a very similar realization last weekend after a round of the Satori board game? It’s a one-two puch from the Universe. Thank you for this.
The way you have thought differently for decades and have managed to go against the grain and help us reshape our thinking is so remarkable. “A fish doesn’t know it swims in water” might be true. But it seems you’re one of the few people who are able to see “their” water (and everyone else’s) and reflect on it. Thank you so much for sharing it with all of us.
It’s the best thing you’ve written. This will serve many people on the path.
Thank you Tim. A great read to start my day and my new here with them.
Thank you, Tim! This resonates with the lens I subscribed to as a scientist and person: the idea of relational meaning (familiar from quantum physics). It’s how the brain constructs reality. Turns out the “relation” part is doing a ton of the heavy lifting. If you’re not opposed to a recommendation, I’d love to hear you speak with Prof Lisa Feldman Barrett about it.
PS: Thank you for Coyote and the chat! I have been “play, play, play”-ing since.
Damn, why wasn’t I named Tim
Tim, i follow you for years, i have all your books (i learned to cook thanks to you!) and just in this times i was feeling a little empty, and i realized that the problem was that i was abandon seeing my friends. I just work, play videogames, play tennis and be with family. So this post was perfect, one of your best, i thank you sooo much for your words.
My biggest challenge is to turn off the critical voice in my head, and consequently, a critical voice in the world. Acceptance of oneself and acceptance of others is the holy grail, for me. Thank you for the reframe on Maslow and the book suggestions,Tim.
My other thought is that this message is very timely as humanity is going through a very significant technological transformation. Being human and valuing humanity has never been more existentially relevant. Humans must value other humans at a time when consciousness and intelligence is being scrutinized by machines and AI. In a world of agents and AGI, the humans are at risk of becoming ‘meat suits’ as the machines gain power and autonomy. The genie IS out of the bottle.
I recently came to a very similar realization: you cannot achieve a goal you are not ready to achieve, no matter how much you indulge in self-help. It’s very easy to oversimplify the “Attainable” in S.M.A.R.T.
But this post is much more than that. To me, it resembled Homo Mysticus – Part 4, especially the final plot twist (and that’s not an easy compliment to earn).
I’m very glad I discovered you through the 4HWW (2008). You never cease to amaze me with your self-actualization, and now your self-transcendence.
A good dog teaches us this daily
This is a trap I’m in and my avoidance of other people certainly comes from all sorts of anxieties and habits from early in life. Not only self esteem issues but family secrets had me habitually pushing people away. The flip side is I have come to view spirituality as the art of cultivating and nourishing invisible connections and relationships (not just between people but between parts of the self.. also with nature and that “something larger than us all”). I’m fascinated by today’s conversation around “emergence.” On a large scale, what are the emergent properties of humanity? What has the soul of the world become?
I never used “self-help” term, as it presupposes a problem, suggests “being unhappy untill…” mechanics.
I do consume “how to live” content, but it doesnt convert into obsession. Two main roles it tends to play in my life are exploration and course-correction.
Exploration – external inputs on what’s possible, ideas. Is X worth a try? Should I experiment with Y? (mostly no)
Course-correction – a short list of biased books/podcasts that I go back to if I drift away from my preferred balance. I’ll re-listen to some “work hard” podcast if I become a bit too lazy, read on “radical acceptance” when i need a nudge in that direction, etc. But it’s just a directed impulse, a tool to rebalance, that’s all.
I feel lucky as I never fell in the trap you are describing.
1000% right.
Most people are living a life they absorbed instead of one they designed. The reactive, fear-based part of them keeps whispering the same lie on repeat — I’m not doing enough, I don’t have enough, therefore I’m not enough. Round and round. No finish line.
The way out isn’t more self-development. It’s not another optimization system. It’s learning to live through the part of you that was never broken in the first place. That part doesn’t need fixing. It just needs permission to lead.
Greg Clement
LOL at “Timmy ain’t gonna give up the sauce.” Great post, I needed this reminder. I had a realization walking around France a few years ago that all life really boils down to is “having a good meal with people you care about.” Easy as that. 🙂
imho one of your best articles man – hits right through the guard.
I’ve been having similar realizations lately… especially after a close touch with death.
I used to take pride in optimizing everything in my life, assuming that I’d never ever become a “SOMO”. Let’s face it though. The line is so thin and as much as we sometimes don’t want to admit it, we all have blind spots.
Great piece, thanks for some solid food for thought.
Thanks! Im into optimization. Like: if we can make things better then we should make them better. And I know of the trap. But you, of all the people, describe it in wise way from a person who should know pros and cons of optimization. Thanks!
May be my favorite piece of writing from you. Cheers – going to make a to-do list now with relationship as the key reasoning behind each action!
This is something I was suspecting for a long time.
I have read hundreds of books and I’m grateful for them. They’ve elevated my life. Yet, my biggest joys and satisfaction came from other people. Even my financial success came from others.
I don’t remember my purchases, the books I read or anything like that. But I do remember hiking with awesome individuals, mentors, friends, girlfriends.
This is especially true in the age of AI. Since everything will be commoditized as AI can do it better and faster, leverage will come only from relationships. It’s not a cynical view of the world but when everyone can do the same thing equally well, who gets the contract? The job? The role?
The person who is most liked.
The self-help bros ruined self-help. No money to make unless you keep flogging solutions like a hammer looking for problems in your audience. Not even you specifically but the whole industry.
The first snake I’ve seen with testes
The parable made me pause and reflect. Thank you Tim.
Sigh. I’d say “True, when true.” If self-improvement is an effort to eliminated suffering, it won’t work, as you described. In contrast, if self-improvement is about removing the pebbles that are stuck in our shoes that make it painful to walk and impossible to run, it is a huge force multiplier. Speaking from painful experience here…..
Tim — at the moment I am 83 years old — but I read 4 hr WKWK when it came out, sent you an email and you responded. Your following books have been on my reading list since then and Tools of Titans is now serving as a Step Up PT Tool as I recover from a hip replacement. I needed a big fat book!
As someone who has also gotten DEEP into self-help — for decades! — this made a lot of sense to me and I saw myself in your writing. THANKS. My To-Do list will be revised to better serve my having more PEOPLE in my life. Have a good day!
Thanks for this blogpost. A good part of it is pretty similar to my own experience. I’m in my mid fifties an back to university – getting my masters degree in enviromental science/ ecology (I blame you and Martha Beck…) and for some reasons I always come back to the intermediate disturbance hypothesis (IDH). Only while in the intermediate section there is the possibility for different stages of recovery… and that is true for most parts of my life…
Excellent post. It is similar to Jim Rohn’s focus that self development is undertaken to improve yourself for others. We are works in progress but self focus can easily become unhealthy.
Your post is like an affirmation, it echoed the pattern occurring in my life right now. I must get into the field!!!
Love this approach to life where we are exploring the middle. Most important.
I agree with improving our relationships first.. My rationale is that relationships are most important because they are the pathway to chiseling ourselves. We strive to improve ourselves to keep our relationships happy. But there is a catch, at some point, there will be total acceptance within our relationships (our flaws an all). Should we stop there? What is Self-Realization actually?
I’ve followed your work for long, it has helped me in my difficult times. Interestingly, I used the burger to illustrate Intentional Habits a few years ago.. What a coincidence!
P.S. Re: audience and performativity—I’ve lived a strangely parallel life. In one lane, I’ve been speaking into the void for many years. In the other, I was shining for a couple of years… until it quietly destroyed parts of me. I’m now in my Kintsugi phase..
Thank you for this reflection—it landed exactly when I needed it.
Warmly,
Lakshmi